A case study using scale

Many morphological studies select sample sets to explore neighbourhoods of interest, particularly in terms of their structural street properties, measures of scale or density, and proximity to the metropolitan center (Cervero and Gorham, 1995, Crane and Crepeau, 1998, French and Scoppa, 2007, Handy et al., 2003, Jacobs, 1993, Peponis et al., 2007, Southworth and Owens, 1993); yet beyond the established and distinctive structures of these neighborhoods, few have analyzed, in depth, the variability in their measures. This study randomly samples 4,321 localities from the 24 largest American metropolitan areas and describes a method using the measures of length and area to evaluate the variability both between and within these localities. Calculated as the standard deviation of mean scale, Inter Buffer Variability is introduced to describe the variation between these localities while Intra Buffer Variability describes the variation, or consistency, within these localities. How varied then are the measures of scale, and are the measures for some MSAs more varied than others? As will be shown, the MSA Inter Buffer Variability for both length and area are broad, which is expected given both the urban and suburban localities captured across each MSA; and yet, the MSA Intra Buffer Variability is also broad suggesting more variation within these localities than originally suggested by the samples illustrated within the literature. Comparatively for each measure of length and area, both Inter and Intra Buffer Variability are graphed one in relation to the other with their associated means used to delineate those trending higher or lower than average. Interestingly, four quadrants emerge distinctively delineating the measures of scale for these MSAs.